The Racist Within

This article demonstrates the author's psychoanalytic method of pursuing racism's various forms, functions, and locations, including within himself, a person of color. It argues that to disrupt racism on any level, we must realize the unconscious motivations every individual has to actively engage in racist ideology. This is due to racism's malevolent efficiency to articulate and structure experiences, such as threat and enjoyment, for both the individual and the group. The paper uses clinical vignettes to show the value of theorizing interdisciplinarily to accurately portray the complexity, contradictions, and intractability of racism's manifestations. It claims that addressing the questions racism poses requires first articulating the particularity of one's active psychic attachment to what racist process provides.